


Shibboleth

by wigglebox



Series: Supernatural - Season 15 Coda Fics [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Having Faith, M/M, Pining, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22727419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wigglebox/pseuds/wigglebox
Summary: Having Jack back doesn't fix everything or make everything suddenly okay, but it can keep everyone moving forward until it is.
Series: Supernatural - Season 15 Coda Fics [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1514216
Comments: 6
Kudos: 44





	Shibboleth

Exhaustion eventually morphed into one last ‘hurrah’ of adrenaline for Dean by the end of the night. While everyone shuffled to their rooms after three hours of talking and eating, he volunteered to clean up the dishes and bottles. He needed a task.

Dean didn’t want to go back to his shoebox of a room yet. 

Washing the dishes was an easy, mindless task only relying on a basic version of auto-pilot. Dean knew if he tried to go to bed right at that moment, his mind would unleash a floodgate of things he didn’t want to think of. He’d only lay awake in bed for hours, getting frustrated.

Better to zone out instead. A pre-game to a good night’s sleep. 

Sitting at the table that night, hearing Jack carefully choose his words, Dean began to feel more and more overwhelmed at the situation ahead of him. A feeling not helped by the little nugget of worry when he learned what Jack had been doing for the past few months. What was even more concerning: Cas didn’t say anything to stop it. But, Dean kept quiet.

It was a moment of clarity when Jack came back, slamming Dean with full-force just how much larger this whole fight was beyond any of them. The knowledge that God had them on a string, dangling them over a void had stayed with Dean over the last three months, but now there were new cosmic players on the field.

Everything began to tangle in his head while they ate, one thought piling on top of another on top of another. Dean knew Cas kept throwing him _looks_ but he ignored them. He couldn’t look at Cas as the time passed that night. With each and every minute that went by, Dean felt a dull buzz drum up in his veins and he couldn’t tell if it was from the alcohol or the spotlight Cas put him under. 

Dean knew what Cas was looking for, and the thought of it made Dean want to dive under the table and shut everyone out. 

Annoyingly, the meditative action of scrubbing dinner dishes wasn’t helping at all. 

It was one thing being the pawns in a game set up by God to lose. It was one thing with them being against him, but now they had a new potential challenger, and Dean felt a constant buzzing of anxiety that night thinking about what Death envisioned their roles to be in this whole thing.

With the sound of the water and garbage disposal, combined with a focus on the increasingly chaotic mess in his head, Dean didn’t see or hear Cas enter the kitchen. By the time Cas stopped right next to Dean, right in the peripheral spot, Dean glanced at the movement and jumped. Startled, he dropped the scrubber into the sink of water, and suds bounced back at him, hitting him in the face. Cursing, Dean reached for the dish towel. 

“Sorry,” Cas said, not sounding all too sorry with a tinge of amusement in his tone. Dean noted out of the corner of his eye Cas’s relaxed stance against the counter. Their tension seemed gone—for now. 

Dean wiped his face and tossed the towel back on the counter and got back to work. He had to keep his focus.

He had to. 

A brief pause passed between them as Dean finished another dish. He lamented how many minutes must have been wasted between them over the years just standing in an uncomfortable silence and--

“I wanted to thank you,” Cas said, quiet and barely audible over the sound of rushing water water. 

The words caused Dean’s hands to falter in their motion, but he kept his eyes on the bubbles. 

If he was fully honest with himself...

He finished the dish in his hand and Cas watched as Dean placed it in the drying rack. With the water now off, Dean heard a dull ringing in his ears as the silence rushed in to replace the noise. The bubbles in the sink provided a faint sizzling sound, and Dean stared at them. 

It was in times like these Dean remembered that Cas didn’t breathe. If Dean didn’t see that Cas was next to him, he would have believed he was still alone in the kitchen. Of all the things passing through his head at that moment, Dean wondered what it’d be like to hear a sigh or a hitch of a breath, or--

“Dean--” Cas said, pushing Dean back to the present. 

Dean cleared his throat and wiped his hands on the towel. The exhaustion was starting back up again. 

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” he said, not looking at Cas; not _able_ to look at Cas.

“I knew you weren’t,” the words said one thing, but Cas’s tone said another. Dean felt the heat of shame crawl up into his face. 

“Did you?” he asked, immediately wincing at the challenge. He forced himself to bite down the rest of that defensive sting as it started to climb up his throat. _He has every right to think you were,_ the newer, calmer voice reminded Dean. He had been trying to listen to it more in the past week and a half, making an earnest effort. 

But the honest voice could be brutal. 

He really did fuck it up. 

“If I thought you were going to do anything bad, I wouldn’t have brought him back here,” Cas reassured Dean, more confidence in his voice but still a little shaky. “I admit there was some hesitation—I know it’s still painful.”

Dean swallowed hard and absorbed that statement. A week felt like a year now, and a month felt like an eternity. It had been the longest, and shortest, three months he’d experienced in his entire life. 

_Time just moves differently now that you know—_

“Dean?”

He blinked and refocused, realizing only then that he was on the brink of another overwhelmed thought spiral.

“I missed him too you know.”

“Last time you saw him, you wanted him dead,” Cas reminded Dean, a slight edge to his voice that told Dean they were going to have a conversation addressing that at some point. “But I still know you wouldn’t have hurt him.”

 _Your face said otherwise_ , Dean wanted to snap, the scene at the table for the last three hours playing back like a slideshow in his head.

Dean crossed his arms and looked away. In all honesty, he couldn’t remember what actually happened or how he acted. The emotions were there, but in a trace amount. His argument was there, but it evaporated before it could get out of Dean’s mouth. What he knew then versus what he knew now--

“I wanted to be angry. Hell, maybe I still am, I don’t know. Yes it still hurts,” Dean said, keeping track of what he said. It all felt different now. “It’s easier to--to get mad, but, I think we all missed--it was a struggle for the past few months. I think we all missed him. I don’t know. It’s been hard around here. We’re all getting jerked around and he was too and--”

“Dean--”

“And I trust you,” Dean cut Cas off before the conversation pivoted. He turned his head back when he talked, meeting Cas’s gaze. Dean wanted him to know that he meant that statement.

The words hung heavy in the air between them. 

There were still doubts--there were always going to be doubts and Dean still struggled. He still had trouble reigning in the panic that rose every time he tried to dissect his life now; every time he tried to figure out what was real, what was a setup; what was a direct plant in Dean’s life to purposefully fuck him up

That fear still grabbed Dean by the throat. His brain couldn’t stop throwing out scenarios where they lost, and lost hard. They piled on top of each other like a house of cards, and Dean was just _waiting_ for the final swing that’d take it all down around him.

But this felt right. It felt secure and how it was supposed to go. Dean didn’t want to fight that anymore.

“Thank you,” Cas said, his voice barely above a whisper. It sent a shiver running down Dean’s spine, but he didn’t look away. It was a familiar expression: intensity--unblinking, like Cas was trying to will his words and thoughts into Dean’s head through his eyes. Dean wished most times that he could hear them. 

The sudden desire to step into Cas’s space rocked sprang up out of nowhere; a need for contact not prompted by their usual desperation or adrenaline, but just because it was there in front of him now. 

Dean didn’t move and bit his tongue. He only trusted himself enough to nod in acknowledgment, finally breaking eye contact. 

Cas hesitated, and Dean could still feel that gaze on him like he was caught in the spotlight; like Cas knew exactly what Dean was thinking.

After a moment, Cas turned away and walked to the door slowly and steadily, slipping back into the hallway. 

And Dean could breathe again. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> A long-delayed coda! As soon as the show went on hiatus, so did my writing muse. I did a little cross-stitch to get the juices flowing. It's still kinda sleepy, but I'm also excited to get a new computer soon! Maybe that'll wake it back up. 
> 
> I'm noticing as the episodes are going on, it's getting harder and harder to write about their emotional state with the outside-forces and internal ones. Their emotions keep piling up and they're in this weird state of limbo right now. 
> 
> So this is a little fic. The final scenes with Jack really tore me up in a good way and man oh man I just love this show. 
> 
> Thank you to my beta who keeps putting up with me, [KelpietheThundergod/Cuddlemonsterdean(tumblr)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpietheThundergod)
> 
> <3 Jen 
> 
> PS: I've noticed some people subscribing to stories that are one-offs. I'm not sure if people are trying to subscribe to ME, so if that's the case, [click here!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wigglebox)


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